Babbling Point

  I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You're the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You're my letter to desire: And you'll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You're my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends. (neil gaiman)

When you start working on a story set in a new universe, where do you find it easiest to begin? Art by Charless Vess, from the book INSTRUCTIONS, written by Neil Gaiman "Begin with the story. Always begin with the story. (Unless you're Lud in the Mist .) The world is there for the story to happen in. Here and now, you don't need to tell the history of the world before you start telling a story that happened on the Isle of Man. You tell the story and let the background and the history creep in where it's needed. The same goes for worlds you've built yourself." NEIL GAIMAN

RJ Ledesma was lucky enough to have a really long interview with Neil Gaiman (and managed to hug him as well). It was also great that RJ got to ask Gaiman about what he thought of the local comic book creators. RJ: Did you also like Budjette Tan’s Trese? GAIMAN : I really liked it. What I’m really enjoying right now is that people from the Philippines send me and give me comics. This makes me happy. And I just love the fact that these are comics using Philippine culture and folklore. One of the things I really love about the contest is the feeling that I got to point out to people that this stuff is cool. Because when I first came out here, people were giving me books of local folklore and I was reading them. And I was loving them. People would then ask me, “What do you like?” and I would tell them “I liked the aswangs and the manananggals.” After that, they would ask me if I would put them in my stories. Then I started feeling as if I did (write about them) it would lend them some ki...

It's somewhat strange yet wonderful to see Neil Gaiman on stage with Amanda Palmer and to see supers crawl on the bottom of the screen to explain to you that she's "Neil Gaiman's girlfriend". Which sounds like a high schoolish thing to do. Grade school, even. Also great to know how he keeps himself busy; how he seems to be moving from medium to medium, genre to genre (now that he's writing non-fiction). And how he looks so happy (and somewhat tired). Was fun to hang out with the Dream King again. Thanks to RAZOR.TV http://www.razor.tv/ for uploading all these videos! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Two links I found via http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/archiveMain.html (So, should I call this a reTweet or a reBlog?) From a recent profile of the novelist Ian McEwan in THE NEW YORKER: Three years ago, McEwan culled the fiction library of his London town house, in Fitzroy Square. He and his younger son, Greg, handed out thirty novels in a nearby park. In an essay for the Guardian, McEwan reported that "every young woman we approached . . . was eager and grateful to take a book, whereas the men could not be persuaded. Nah, nah. Not for me. Thanks, mate, but no. The researcher's conclusion: When women stop reading, the novel will be dead." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_zalewski?currentPage=all http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/20/fiction.features11 http://www.dearoldlove.com/ is short notes to people we've loved (or at least liked). Requited or unrequited. For example: Reintroduction Facebook keeps putting you in the list of ...

Last Monday, got to work and saw this on my desk. It took me awhile to realize who sent it and when I did, my jaw dropped; which was the the reaction of the other people who saw the card. (They'd squint, try to read the signature, ask who sent it, flip the card, see the sender's name and their jaw would drop right beside my jaw) Thanks so much for the nice copies of Trese -- I can't wait! They look amazing! --Neil Gaiman And I had this silly smile on my face for the rest of the day.

PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette, is a book that “chronicles, the history and impact of the complete works of Neil Gaiman in film, fiction, music, comics books and beyond.” (It even includes Gaiman’s blog entry about the marriage proposal that happened during the Subic Ad Congress. Yes, Jason and Maui, have gone beyond Google-famous. They are now part of literature!) Aside from providing Gaiman fans with a checklist of almost every single thing he’s ever written, it contains one of the most comprehensive interviews with him. (Although THE SANDMAN COMPANION by Hy Bender provides the reader with the very detailed dissection of the series, the book did not go into as much detail about Gaiman’s life story.) In PRINCE OF STORIES, you find out trivia, like how their family was originally named Chaiman or Haiman and when they moved to England, the spelling was changed to Gaeman, but was changed to Gaiman during ...

We went to the Ad Congress in Subic and we didn’t even get a stupid shirt. We did bring home something better :) Maki’s radio commercial about having curly hair and headaches won us a Bronze Award Jao and Rommel’s TV commercial about the ABC’s of driving was awarded Bronze in Film, Bronze in Editing, and a Silver in Art Direction. Brandie and Tin’s LOTUS SPA won a whole lot of awards, including BEST OF MEDIUM and a Gold Award. Their works for Ponstan, Bonamin, and PAWS got them several awards as well. (Will upload the complete list when I get it) I didn’t get to bring home any award, but I did get the chance to give Neil Gaiman copies of TRESE. I can’t remember what I said when I was finally in front of him and he started to flip through the pages of our work. I suddenly realized what Hob Galding or (dare I compare myself to) Will Shakespeare as they stood in front of Morpheus. Gaiman was just this great presence, this prince of stories, and I wished I could’ve said more than whatever ...

Hang Out with the Dream King A Gathering of Dreamlings and Nightmares with Neil Gaiman Where Neil Gaiman reads from his latest works & answers your queries Only 1,000 tickets available Includes an autographed Beowulf manuscript The first 100 attendees to register at the venue get to be part of the an exclusive book signing hour with Neil Gaiman. El Centro Subic, Subic Bay November 24, 2007, Saturday, 9am Tickets at P1,500 (cash basis only) Call Lucre Mae Villaluna at 09156436040 or (02)7518152

DAY OF THE DEAD Neil Gaiman wrote an episode of BABYLON5 where the dead came back and spent a day with their loved ones. I forgot the details of the story, but each crew member of Babylon5 was only visited by one person from beyond. Which makes me wonder who will come and visit me if that strange cosmic event ever happened on Earth. So, let me take the time to remember three people on this day. BUDDY TAN: That’s what a lot of people called me dad. I wonder if his mother ever called him “Salvador!” when he was being naughty or disobedient. A lot of people also called him “Boss.” When me and Brandie were still kids, we used to sleep in between my mom and dad. When we got too large to fit in one bed, we started sleeping in the other room with my mom. My dad would make me stay with him. He’d tell me that the aswang might come and he’d need me to stay and protect him. Now that I think about it, knowing that an aswang would come should’ve scared me more and made me run to the othe...

Hanging Out with the Dream King (for your weekend viewing) Gaiman @ Google: where he reads several things from FRAGILE THINGS and answers a whole lot of questions, total running time 60:52 Wherein Gaiman talks about H.P.Lovecraft Wherein Gaiman talks about GOOD OMENS Wherein Gaiman gives us INSTRUCTIONS on what to do if we ever end up in a fairy tale Wherein Gaiman and McKean talk about MIRROR MASK, among other things

Harry Potter + Sliders + Peter Pan + 1960s X-Men + Green Lantern Corps = INTERWORLD Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It was a fun read for the most part. Well, maybe it was because I identified with the character so much. Joey Harker is a boy who’s “directionally challenge”. He got lost in his own house. (Same way I got lost in my own neighborhood. And I still get lost every time I go in Glorietta. I never know which corridor will bring me to Filbars and which one will bring me to G4.) Anyway, so Joey Harker gets lost in his own town and ends up in an alternate reality and ends up meeting other J/o/e/y Harkers from other realities. He gets recruited to they’re mission, which is to protect the rest of the multiverse from the forces of magic and science. The other more interesting story is how this story ended up becoming a novel. Neil Gaiman talked about it in his blog ; how INTERWORLD was originally supposed to be pitched as an animated movie (and they tried to pitch it to Dreamwor...

. I don't know where our country's going, but I know where I'll be tomorrow: at the Neil Gaiman event at Rockwell!!! Anyway, here's an excerpt from a speech that Gaiman gave at the 1997 PRO/con in Oakland: We are creators. When we begin, separately or together, there’s a blank piece of paper. When we are done, we are giving people dreams and magic and journeys into minds and lives that they have never lived. And we must not forget that. I don’t want to sound like an inspirational speaker here. “Be you.” be the best you that you can be.” But this is really important. It’s something that we mostly lose track of when we starts, because when we start in comics, we’re kids, and we have no idea who we are or what our voices, as artists or as writers. Young artists want to be Rob Leifeld, or Bernie Wrightson, or Frank Miller, just as young writers want to be Alan Moore, or Chris Claremont or, well, Frank Miller. You’ve seen their portfolios. You’ve read the scripts. We all swi...

. Below is an article I wrote for Karen's column about my trip to the San Diego Comic-Con and my report on the Neil Gaiman talk. I even got him to autograph my copy of "Sandman: Seasons of Mists". My only regret was that I wasn't able to attend the midnight reading of his story because I fell asleep. At least this time, the Gaiman talk will happen in the afternoon and I'll surely be there. Check out the part where he talks about his projects. Interesting to note how some of the titles have changed and how some books never pushed through. Maybe we can ask him about it this Saturday. See you in The Dreaming. Hanging Out with the Dream King by Budjette Tan (Published in Karen Kunawicz’s ON THE VERGE, Mirror Weekly, September 18, 1995) Over two hundred people, including myself, packed that room in the San Diego Convention Center last July 28. As we filled up the place up, we immediately saw the man we came to see and hear. As expected, he was dressed in black from hea...